Storied Stone: Reframing the Philadelphia Museum of Art's South Indian Temple Hall

$19.99 at Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Storied Stone weaves together memories and scholarship to offer an illuminating perspective on one of the most striking museum spaces. While visiting Madurai, Tamil Nadu, in 1913, the Philadelphian Adeline Pepper Gibson purchased over sixty huge granite carvings, given in 1919 to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Over the past century, the museum has presented these architectural elements in several iterations as a temple hall, or mandapam. This behind-the-scenes account explores a century of debate about…